A dominant group sustains rule by presenting its own interests as universal national ones

Evidence

But the development and expansion of the particular group are conceived of, and presented, as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all the “national” energies. In other words, the dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (on the juridical plane) between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups—equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate economic interest. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 762

Categorization

• XREF: Directly prefigures Laclau’s populist articulation and later ideational analyses of hegemony that Islamophobia scholarship draws on; also echoes how ‘national interest’ frames in anti-Muslim discourse universalize a particular community’s anxieties. — connects to: Politicians invoke nationhood to address the whole electorate, whatever their policy views. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 81
• QUESTION: The ‘up to a certain point’ limit clause — how far must a dominant group actually concede to subordinate interests for hegemony to hold, and what happens at that boundary?